Chapter Seven
Note: this is the mostly QL part of the chapter, except Sam's farm is
based on my aunt's.
Sam finished eating. He laid his form down, and brought his empty
dish over to the sink. Being excused, he motioned to Al to come follow
him outside. Sam knew that his father was usually watched the news right
after supper, so he knew that he and Al could be alone outside to talk.
"I never thought that I would be a part of the subject of
conversation around your dinner table in Indiana," Al said as soon as
thetwo of them walked outside.
"I think it was only because we had a special guest tonight."
"Who? Me or Dodger?"
"You actually knew Kelly growning up," Sam affirmed. "It's
amazing!"
"Yeah," he answered. "It's really a samll world."
"I think that life sometimes is really like a small town, just
like Elk Ridge," Sam commented rememebering how close everything and
everyone always seemed to be in his hometown. "Everybody just seems to be
interconnected with everybody, even when they don't even know each other
yet."
"Smallville, USA," the Bronx said not amused as he looked around
out onto his surroundings. Somehow, though Sam felt that his friend
totally agreed with his analogy. Al looked through the window behind him
into the kitchen. "I'm surprised you didn't have seconds," he said as his
mind turned to supper.
"I'm stuffed."
"I always used to have seconds," he said. "Sometimes, I even had
thirds or fourths. Isn't Mrs. V.'s ziti great? It used to be the best in
the Bronx. I guess now it's the best in Elk Ridge, and probably in all of
Indiana. I wish I could taste it again."
Sam was really amazed at al's crazed reaction over Mrs. Viaggio's
baked ziti was. "If you could choose between Kelly and the ziti. What
would you choose?" Sam asked Al trying to find out the extent of his
friend's food feelings.
"Really delicious food or a really hot babe," he said trying to
figure out the two options. He thought hard about it for about a minute,
and then he said, "I'll chose both."
*Ladies and gentlemen, it's a tie,* Sam joked. "You really don't
know?"
"I do know. I can't live on ziti alone, and one could really work
up an appetite 'studying' with Dodger," he said ribbing his friend.
"I think there is something bothering her," Sam said. "She told
me that she has something on her mind, and I feel that it is a big
something."
Al pressed a few buttons on the handlink, and studied the
display. "Well, Ziggy is coming up with nada. It's probably only some
little high school thing, anyway. It's probably nothing to worry about.
Tina always seems to overreact to little things, and I think I remember
Dodger always seeming to overreact too. Don't worry, Sam."
Sam began to walk inside, but decided not to and walked back to
where al was standing. "Al, when you were younger did you write to
Kelly?" Sam questioned remembering the letter he had just read a short
time before.
"I think I did," he answered. "I used to tell her all about some
stuff that was going on, but only the clean stuff. You probably wrote to
Katie, when you were in college. It was almost the same thing between
Dodger and me."
"I thought so."
Sam looked around at the familiar surroundings of his family's
farm around him. He knew that inside the house his family was giong
through the same routine they did almost every night in 1970. His father
was in the den watching the news on television watching the gory scenes
that wre happening in the military conflict Sam's brother was fighting
in. Sam's mom was in the kitchen washing dishes. Katie was most probably
in her room - actually Tom's old room, which she got when he left - doing
her homework. Everything was just like it was a evening that Sam lived
long ago. It was the same evening that he was living once again.
This time though, he knew exactly what was going to happen to his
family. He knew that everything will not always stay peachy keen as it
was on this June evening in 1970. He was back home again, and he felt
helpless. He knew what was going to happen to his family, but was unable
to do anything about it to stop it from happening. He knew that his
father was giong to die of a heart attack in 1972d. He knew that his
little sister was going to marry a abusive alcoholic when she was
seventeen. He managed to save his older brother, Tom, from gettint killed
in a traitor's attack duing the war, but only because he leaped into
Vietnam when everything was happening. Sam wished that he could save all
of them from what he knew, but he dared not. He knew that even if he
tried he would not suceed. What was the use? He knew what the use was,
but life is a two-way street. He could talk all he wanted and tell them
their fates, but it would not mattter if they do not do something to
prevent it.
He tightly closed his eyes blocking out all of the painful
memories. He listened to the sounds around him. Teh same sounds he heard
many years ago. A few calls from birds that flew overhead. The sounds of
the dairy cows and otehr animals down in the grazing feilds and the barn.
Teh faint notes of the Beatles song, "Get Back," coming out of his
siter's room. He tood a long deep breath. He smelled the same smells that
he once did growing up. The nature smells from the barnyard and the
feilds, and from the blooms in his mother's garden. He smelled family
smells, such as the deliscious smells of homecooking coming from the open
window in the kitchen. He let the sounds and smells around him take him
back to the joyous days of his youth.
The Teenager opened his eyes for the first time. He looked at the
sights around him. At the outside world in front of him. The cows grazing
in the fields. The wind shifting the stalks of seed corn andgrains in the
feilds. The bright multicolored sunlight spotlighting everything down
below, as if God was saying how beautiful the Heartland was.
He turned to his right, and saw a older man who seemed out of
place for their surroundings. Yet, although the boy did not remember much
about what his future might bring, he knew that the man standing next to
him was his best friend. He remembered all that he knew before about him.
Somehow, everything now flet very far off and not within Sam's reach.
He looked out on to his surrounding again - out towards nature's
majesty and towards his house, family's majesty. He felt that he lived
this evening once before, although he did not know when. Kelly's words
echoed in his head. *'A person could relive the same experience twice.
Maybe, a person could relive a certain night, or maybe a period of time
even loger than that, such as a day or even a few days.'* "Deja vu."
"Whatcha say Sam?" Al asked curiously.
"Deja vu," he repeated leaning against the side of the house.
"That's what I feel like I'm going through right now. I feel like I'm
living the exact same experience twice."
"You are."
He looked directly at his friend. "I am?" the Teenager asked
quizically. "What do you mean I am?"
Al looked at Sam leaning against the wall with the expression of
youth's curiousity. He was ging to say something, but finally decided to
brush everything aside with the excuse that his friend remembered
everything, but was just thinging with the wrong brain. "Just forget it,
kid."
"Al, do you believe in deja vu?" Sam asked. "Kelly and I were
talkig about it before, because it was in one of the letters you sent
her. You said it happened to you."
"I certainly don't remembering it happening," he answered. "It
probably means absolutely zippo. I was probably jsut talking about a date
or going out with my ol' buddies. Something along those lines."
"You probably know better than I do."
"And, about that girlfriend of yours, her problem is probably
zippo too," he said before walking though the door of light.
Is Kelly's problem just "zippo" or it something a whole lot bigger than
Al supposes it is? Read Chapter Seven to find out.
Note: From now on, when Sam acts like his younger self, because of the
merging brain, he is refered to as the Teenager.
Monica